Saturday, December 15, 2012

Former No. 1 draft pick Matt Bush has agreed to a plea bargain in his DUI hit-and-run case that includes a prison sentence of at least three years on top of time already served, his father has told the Tampa Bay Times.

“He’s taking it pretty good,” Daniel Bush said, according to the newspaper. “He’s not crying or sulking. He’s preparing for it. Everybody in our family is backing him up.”

The former Tampa Bay Rays minor league pitcher has reportedly been held on a $440,000 bond since March in Charlotte County on Florida’s lower Gulf Coast on seven charges, counts that include leaving the scene of an accident that seriously injured a motorcyclist.

Court records also showed Bush was driving with a suspended license. The Florida Highway Patrol said Bush kept driving after hitting a motorcycle, whose rider was hospitalized for weeks with numerous serious injuries.

“Literally, the tire on the SUV ran over the driver’s head,” a witness told WBBH-TV in Fort Myers. “Without the helmet, the gentleman would have been dead instantly.”

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The Ryan Leaf and Matt Bush draft picks remain sources of bitter jokes in the SD sports scene. I think Leaf may be incarcerated now as well (the Chargers took him #2 the year the Colts drafted Peyton Manning).

I suppose WAR/year is not a bad metric to use to judge the relative strength of drafts. Though you would need to wait a few years before you could start comparing years. Are there any web site that do that?

Matt Bush signed for $3.15 million back in 2004, yet he's been sitting in jail since March with bond set at $440,000. Unless he just decided to get a head start on serving his time, it appears he has neither the $440,000 nor the $44,000 bail-bond fee. Even by athlete standards, that would be kind of amazing.

Matt Bush signed for $3.15 million back in 2004, yet he's been sitting in jail since March with bond set at $440,000. Unless he just decided to get a head start on serving his time, it appears he has neither the $440,000 nor the $44,000 bail-bond fee. Even by athlete standards, that would be kind of amazing.

That doesn't seem that outrageous too me. Take out a third for taxes and agent fees and you're down to 2 mil right out of the gate. An early twenty something blowing through two million bucks in nearly a decade seems pretty predictable. I'd bet most guys blow through their signing bonus pretty quickly. Buy a snazzy car, live the high life a bit, maybe pay off mom and dads house...I'd take two million if someone gve it to me but I also think that if I was 21 and got it I wouldn't have it when I was 30.

Perhaps, but there's a big difference between spending and "blowing." It's one thing to be illiquid, but it's quite another to spend $2 million and end up with little or nothing in assets no more than seven years later. You'd have to spend $6,000 per week to run through $2 million in 7 years. (But, obviously, Matt Bush wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed to begin with.)

Perhaps, but there's a big difference between spending and "blowing." It's one thing to be illiquid, but it's quite another to spend $2 million and end up with little or nothing in assets no more than seven years later. You'd have to spend $6,000 per week to run through $2 million in 7 years.

Oh please, he could blow through half of it in the first year if he's an idiot, then you just need a few bad investments and a couple baby mommas and some more dumb spending and there goes the rest. If lottery winners can find themselves penniless in years Bush could do it in months.

I guess we have a lot of big spenders here at BBTF. I like to spend money as much as the next guy, but it seems like it would be hard to spend $2 million and have ~$0 in assets to show for it. (And the fact his family and friends have apparently let him sit in jail for 9 months rather than spend $44,000 on a bail bond tells me he either didn't share with his family and friends or they promptly wasted the money as well. $44,000 should be a one-call home-equity loan on a hypothetical paid-off house in the San Diego area.)

When former NBA guard Kenny Anderson filed for bankruptcy in October 2005, he detailed how the estimated $60 million he earned in the league had dwindled to nothing. He bought eight cars and rang up monthly expenses of $41,000, including outlays for child support, his mother's mortgage and his own five-bedroom house in Beverly Hills, Calif.—not to mention $10,000 in what he dubbed "hanging-out money." He also regularly handed out $3,000 to $5,000 to friends and relatives.

I'm with you re: the stupidity of athletes when it comes to money. My point is simply that if you spend $2 million but don't even have a house or car or a couple Rolexes you can sell if/when you need bail money, you've really been dumb with your money.

When former NBA guard Kenny Anderson filed for bankruptcy in October 2005, he detailed how the estimated $60 million he earned in the league had dwindled to nothing. He bought eight cars and rang up monthly expenses of $41,000, including outlays for child support, his mother's mortgage and his own five-bedroom house in Beverly Hills, Calif.—not to mention $10,000 in what he dubbed "hanging-out money." He also regularly handed out $3,000 to $5,000 to friends and relatives.

Even if you assume that half his salary went to taxes (which is high), it would have taken 49 years to burn through the remaining 30M at 51K a month. Those must have been some expensive cars.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar was in terrible financial shape when he retired just due to poor investment choices. Billy Beane's parents lost his bonus money on a bad investment. It goes on and on.

People with money who didn't earn it by means requiring intelligence often make unintelligent investment and spending decisions. Shocking, no?

Victims of bad investment choices aside, if you give $60 million to a rockhead he'll find a way to make himself broke before long. Investing it and living off the income like a normal person? Not on the agenda. That would require THINKING.

Where are the agents in all this? Not necessarily the Bush cases but Kenny Anderson (who I always liked). Hook your client up with a non-crooked financial advisor. Negotiate that half the salary goes into a trust they can't access until they're 35.

It certainly makes long-term deferred money look more attractive now doesn't it? I have no idea how much money Bonilla may have wasted over the years but now he's hopefully old enough to be out of his young and stupid stage and he's got a couple of million rolling in every year.

People with money who didn't earn it by means requiring intelligence often make unintelligent investment and spending decisions. Shocking, no?

Where are the agents in all this? Not necessarily the Bush cases but Kenny Anderson (who I always liked). Hook your client up with a non-crooked financial advisor. Negotiate that half the salary goes into a trust they can't access until they're 35.

Having just finished doing trust research, I don't know that it's possible to immunize yourself against debt by stashing some of your money in a trust.

While you might be able to create a barrier against some bad decisions, or make it more difficult to make bad decisions by making it more difficult to get at your own money, I'm not so sure you can limit your liability in a lot of cases just by having some of your money in a trust.

Also, I don't know that you wouldn't be able to break your own agreement. If you're bad enough with money to need to hide it from yourself, you're probably capable of getting desperate enough to need to get at it.

In theory, but not necessarily in reality. The advent of deferred compensation brought with it a cottage industry of people who offer to buy the rights to athletes' deferred compensation in exchange for an upfront payment.

Like with below-market long-term deals, this is another area in which agents often face an ethical conundrum: Doing the right thing for the client could make it tougher to get future clients and/or put fewer dollars in the agent's pocket.

I'm a little surprised, though (not skeptical, just surprised) that there would be a way of evading debt that straightforward. I suppose I should figure that leaving ways out would be in the interest of the wealthy, and would therefore appear in the law like mushrooms during a damp summer.

Seems wrong, somehow, that I should be able to stash wealth, go wreak havoc, then enjoy that which I have kept immune to recovery.

Wasn't OJ's NFL pension a big source of income they couldn't touch? I recall his annual pension being something like $130K a year.

Yes. But he also had annuities he had purchased himself that were shielded in retirement plans.

Seems wrong, somehow, that I should be able to stash wealth, go wreak havoc, then enjoy that which I have kept immune to recovery.

Yes, it does. I imagine the idea is that you don't want someone totally wiped out by a lawsuits and then left to be a burden on the state.

They should however, cap the exemption. e.g. you can keep one primary residence up to $500K, and pension income up to $75K p.a. A person with huge judgements against them shouldn't be left wealthy, just b/c the assets are in a certain form.